Page 37 of So Smitten

“Maybe he hurt one of the girls at a club,” Michael suggested. “You said he was divorced? Maybe we should talk to his ex-wife. Maybe he was abusive, and he screwed with the wrong girl.”

“If that’s the case, then we’re looking at a gang hit,” Faith said, “and then I have to wonder why the Syndicate would kill one of their street bosses without a replacement ready.”

“Maybe it wasn’t one of the Syndicate’s girls. Iliev told us that the Syndicate controls all of the prostitution in Atlanta. Maybe the Bulgarians moved their operation to the suburbs.”

“Maybe,” Faith said, “but why kill a john like this? I could see killing Harris this way to send a message, but a civilian? That’s a lot of risk just to kill a nobody.”

“Well,” Michael said, “it paid off.”

Faith supposed he had a point.

“I want to talk with forensics,” she told Garvey. “Maybe they have details that can help us narrow down our source.”

“Be my guest,” Garvey said.

The CSI in charge was a bespectacled man around Faith’s age named Guillaume. “But you can call me Gil.”

“Well, Gil, what can you tell us?” Michael asked.

“Well,” Gil said, “Cause of death is pretty obvious.” He pointed to a livid red wound that encircled Evans’ neck. A pool of drying blood had settled underneath the wound. “He was shocked so bad that the skin of his neck literally melted onto the collar. The killer took a souvenir home with him.”

Turk sniffed at the wound to get the scent, staying a respectful distance away so he didn’t compromise the evidence. Faith asked, “Can you tell us anything about the weapon? Any guess on the kind of model?”

“That is beyond my area of expertise,” Gil said, “but I don’t know if it would help you to know exactly what model it is. Those things aren’t tracked by serial number, and even if they were, well, Atlanta’s a big city. It’s a pretty good bet that there are thousands of those things out here.”

“What about the electricity?” Michael asked. “How was that provided?”

“Well, we’re looking at something in the range of one hundred twenty milliamps, give or take. That’s definitely enough to kill someone, but depending on the voltage you use, it might not kill them right away.”

“So he’s torturing his victims.”

“Oh yeah. Evans here probably took over a minute to lose consciousness and another minute to die. Then our bad guy kept going for… I’d guess another two or three minutes to turn him into jerky.” He grimaced. “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”

It was, but Faith wasn’t concerned with Gil’s propriety at the moment. “Any other physical evidence? Fibers, body fluids?”

“No body fluids,” Gil replied, “a few fibers. We’ll run them at the lab, but I can tell you just from a cursory examination that they’re going to come back as twenty-dollar pants and a ten-dollar t-shirt. Once more, the kind of stuff that half the city wears.”

Faith and Michael looked at each other. “Thank you, Gil,” Michael said. “If you find anything else, please call us.”

“Will do.”

They stepped away, and Faith said, “So our killer is taking care only to cover his fingerprints but not bothering with the rest of the evidence because it’s so commonplace that it might as well be untraceable.”

“Hiding in plain sight,” Michael said. “Came in through the front door and everything.”

“But he’s not careless,” Faith said, “because he takes everything with him, and covers his fingerprints, which is the only thing he could leave behind that could identify him and not everyone in Georgia.”

“So are we thinking law enforcement?” Michael asked, “someone who would know enough to understand what’s worth hiding and what isn’t?”

“It’s possible,” Faith said, “it’s also possible he just knows very little about crime scene investigation and just didn’t think to cover his boots in plastic or wear clothing that wouldn’t fray.”

“So we’re surrounded by a sea of possibilities, none of which leads to certainty,” Michael summarized.

“One of them leads to certainty,” Faith said. “We just have to figure out which one. I want to talk to the ex-wife. Maybe she’ll be more willing to talk about what her husband was into than the gang is willing to talk about what they’re into.”

“It’s certainly worth a shot,” Michael agreed.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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